June 22, 2003
Briancon - Jausiers
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The next morning I looked out of the window. The previous evening's cloud was gone and we were in for another fine day. I also discovered that if I'd thrown a quarry full of stones at that window last night, Chris would still have been asleep. We ate breakfast, paid the bill and headed out of town, onto our valley road, that of the river Durance. We may have been on another Route Nationale, but it wasn't too busy, it was another bright day in the mountains and we weren't crunching up the Col d'Izoard. There were a couple of ups and downs, but nothing to complain about. All in all it wasn't a bad way to start the day. Although the Col de Vars stands at 2109m above sea level, I wasn't feeling the sense of mild dread, I had the day before. We stopped at Mont Dauphin for a rest and a drink. While we were sucking on our water bottles, another pair of touring cyclists passed by, we exchanged greetings. These fellas were loaded though. One, as well as the usual cycle touring equipment, was carrying a back-pack; a big one at that, not just a camera, waterproof and sandwiches. The other rider was pulling a Bob trailer. I'd read in internet accounts of long distance trail rides in the U.S.A, about the Bob trailer. It's not named after its inventor, Bob Steillberg say, but rather an acronym for its function, Beast Of Burden. It bolts to the rear axle of the bike and evidently, being only single-wheeled, handles well. This was the first time I'd ever seen one in action.
We remounted and turned left towards Guillestre. After a short flat stretch we embarked on a gradual climb, the first step out of the Durance valley. Shortly before Guillestre we caught up with our heavily laden co-Freds. By way of mild mischief, I said to the guy with the Bob, in French, 'That's not a bike it's a truck.' He looked puzzled. I couldn't stop. Again in French, I said, 'You're not a cyclist you're a truck driver.' I'd guessed he was English, except he wasn't, he was Welsh, as was his friend. We passed them and went on to the supermarket in Guillestre. The two Welsh lads, Martin and Paul were of the same mind and turned up shortly after us. They were from Pontypridd and were on an adventure tour from the English Channel to Gibraltar. Not, however, like us, any of this straight line nonsense, but, instead convoluted loops around the coasts of Normandy and Brittany, across the Massif Central, the Rhône valley and into the Alps, with the intention of using the same inventive navigation system through the Iberian peninsular. It sapped my energy just to think of it, carrying all that weight. They were camping of course, They ate and drank in the shade of the supermarket entrance. We said we normally stopped for lunch somewhere a little more picturesque. 'We always do this,' they said.
Leaving the Welsh boys to their fromage frais, we rode out of Guillestre back the way we had come for 500metres and then turned to face the col. The first turns were hard, but we were reasonably fresh and we were packing lunch. A stop to eat was on our minds. We found a flattish piece of grass under some stunted trees, leaned the bikes against the road side and sat down to lunch. We had a view back over the way we had come and Guillestre was still in sight. Soon enough, so were the plucky Welshmen. We finished eating and rode off into what turned out to be the toughest part of the climb, a long section with plenty of hairpin bends, which brought us up into a less steep stretch of alpine pasture. We stopped in the village of Vars to drink, refill our bottles and splash ourselves with cool mountain water from the conveniently placed fountain.
We were not too far off the summit now and the straight up to the new ski village of Les Claux was not too arduous. We turned into the village round the first hairpin of the last section of the climb, 4.5km to go. It was strange being in this isolated place, with its shiny shop fronts, apartments for sale and almost no people. Later in the summer, during the school holiday period, no doubt there are visitors, hiking, mountain biking and taking the air, but now it appeared to be just hanging around waiting for the snow. There were no unpleasantly steep gradients between Les Claux and the col, nevertheless I was glad to see the few parked cars, motor-cycles and the souvenir and drinks stall, marking the end of the climb and the border of another department Alpes de Haute Provence [04] .
We treated ourselves to a can of sugary fizz and chatted to Martin and Paul, and two French riders on unencumbered racing machines, who arrived a few minutes later. I picked up Martin's back -pack just to see what he was carrying. I was staggered, not to say staggering at the weight of it. Paul told us that the total weight of his 'rig' [my word], i.e. bike and loaded Bob trailer was 65 kg. Ouch. I would estimate the total weight of mine at around 30 kg.
Martin and Paul were planng to stay at the camp site at Tournoux at the foot of the pass. We were to aim for Jausiers and a bed for the night. The descent to the main road, the D900 in the Ubaye valley was slow, due to a combination of tight steep hairpins and irregular surfaces. It was scenically spectacular though, as we dropped into a tight ravine , where the valley sides seemed to be almost up by our shoulders. It was eerily quiet and the air was soft, warm and still. We turned right onto the main road, still apparently hemmed in by rocky peaks until the valley broadened out as we reached the edge of Jausiers and the first road sign indicating Nice, at 143 km distant. I followed the sign to the centre of the village, off the main road to the left. I stopped outside the small Tourist Information centre and turned round to look for Chris. No sign. I waited for several minutes and then set off to find him. I rode out of the village towards Barcelonnettte, then turned back into the square, which lay alongside the main road. I didn't see him there. I went back to the TIC. He wasn't there. I performed another circle of the village, stopping again to the TIC to find Chris walking out clutching hotel information. 'They were just about to close,' he said.
We had a choice of two hotels side by side on the road to Barcelonnette, about two km outside the village. We chose the Sans Souci and I enquired about a room at the crowded bar. We were directed to the annexe across the road and given the key to the garage next door, to store the bikes. I volunteered to ride back into the village to find a grocery store, while Chris took a shower. The ride back into the village was easy without a load on, but there was no luck in finding a food shop, 'In Barcelonnette.' I was told, more than once. I rode back to the room, took a look at the map and decided a round trip of a further 18km was not on.
I showered and we crossed the road for dinner. We were the last to take our seats in a crowded dining room. Except that is, for a party of cyclists, who arrived when we were onto our main course. There was no choice of menu. A tureen was being passed from table to table. When our main course arrived there was no sign of a tureen, just plates of pork chops. After dinner we drank beer on the terrace and chatted to a couple from Genoa who were travelling around on a BMW R1200, one of the many touring motorcycles we had seen since our arrival in the Alps. They had travelled 170,000km on two motorcycles since they started touring together. The first was replaced after 100.000km. I asked the wife if she had ever taken the controls, so to speak. No she said, she was happy to let her husband do the driving. I silently recalled the time I had tried and failed to persuade the fair Barbara to take the pillion seat, when I owned a motorcycle. They had been all over Europe, East, West, North and South. They were interested in local food as well as landscape and we were amused, when they recalled a trip to Ayr in Scotland, how much better off the Scots would be if they grilled their fish, instead of plunging it into batter and hot fat. I didn't have the nerve to mention Scottish favourites, the deep-fried pizza or Mars bar. On the recommendation of our new Genoese friends, we were drinking a local beer, brewed in Briançon, until it ran out, at which point the minor mystery of the dinner-time tureen not arriving at our table was solved. The proprietor explained, as she replaced our beers, that our rapacious fellow guests had greedily gobbled up all the Boeuf à la Bourguignonne, so were left with pork chops as a poor, last-minute substitution. Well, to be honest, she didn't use those exact words, but being deprived of one of my favourite dishes, has that effect on my writing. When signing in, on arrival, I heard that the proprietor had a marked southern accent so at this point I asked her if she was originally from the village. Born and bred, she said, in not so many words. 'I noticed your accent,' I said. 'Well, you are in Alpes de Haute Provence. The department stretches as far down as Manosque,' she replied. 'It' the biggest department in France.' Local pride got the better of her here, the bigest department is Gironde [33] around Bordeaux. Be that as it may, hearing that way of talking, [a bit like an Italian speaking French], told me we were close to journey's end. Chris and the Genoese went to bed. I had another beer and turned in myself.
Today's ride: 82 km (51 miles)
Total: 1,243 km (772 miles)
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